Amidst the unfolding homosexual, sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, it’s appropriate to consider the Roman Catholic position on the nature of pastoral ministry. The fact is that Roman Catholicism teaches (1) the priesthood is a special class above that of the laity, (2) that a priest is marked by the Holy Spirit in an indelibable and permenant way, (3) that he can thus represent Christ during the Mass, and (4) he therefore has the sacerdotal authority to make Christ present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper, and (5) a priest can never lose this authority and marking by the Spirit, even if (for example) the priest sexually abuses children. This is an un-Biblical and un-Christian position. The Catechism of the Catholic Church advocates this false teaching:

The divinely instituted ecclesiastical ministry is exercised in different degrees by those who even from ancient times have been called bishops, priests, and deacons. Catholic doctrine, expressed in the liturgy, the Magisterium, and the constant practice of the Church, recognizes that there are two degrees of ministerial participation in the priesthood of Christ: the episcopacy and the presbyterate. The diaconate is intended to help and serve them.